Posted on 07/20/2023 7:36:57 AM PDT by Red Badger
Argonne National Laboratory has pioneered a low-cost, cobalt-based catalyst that boosts efficient hydrogen extraction from water. This innovation is a key step towards achieving the DOE’s goal of significantly reducing green hydrogen production costs.
A new catalyst reduces the expense associated with generating environmentally sustainable hydrogen from water.
A plentiful supply of clean energy is lurking in plain sight. It’s the hydrogen that can be extracted from water (H2O) using renewable energy. Researchers are on the hunt for cost-effective strategies to generate clean hydrogen from water, with an aim to displace fossil fuels and battle climate change.
Hydrogen is a potent source of power for vehicles, emitting nothing more than water. It also plays a crucial role in several industrial processes, particularly in the production of steel and ammonia. The use of cleaner hydrogen in these industries would be extremely beneficial.
A multi-institutional team led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has developed a low-cost catalyst for a process that yields clean hydrogen from water. Other contributors include DOE’s Sandia National Laboratories and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as well as Giner Inc.
“A process called electrolysis produces hydrogen and oxygen from water and has been around for more than a century,” said Di-Jia Liu, senior chemist at Argonne. He also holds a joint appointment in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago.
Proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzers represent a new generation of technology for this process. They can split water into hydrogen and oxygen with higher efficiency at near room temperature. The reduced energy demand makes them an ideal choice for producing clean hydrogen by using renewable but intermittent sources, such as solar and wind.
Di Jia Liu Inspects Catalyst Sample
Senior chemist Di-Jia Liu inspects a catalyst sample inside a tube furnace after heat treatment while postdoc Chenzhao Li carries a pressure reactor for catalyst synthesis. Credit: Argonne National Laboratory
This electrolyzer runs with separate catalysts for each of its electrodes (cathode and anode). The cathode catalyst yields hydrogen, while the anode catalyst forms oxygen. A problem is that the anode catalyst uses iridium, which has a current market price of around $5,000 per ounce. The lack of supply and high cost of iridium pose a major barrier to the widespread adoption of PEM electrolyzers.
The main ingredient in the new catalyst is cobalt, which is substantially cheaper than iridium. “We sought to develop a low-cost anode catalyst in a PEM electrolyzer that generates hydrogen at high throughput while consuming minimal energy,” Liu said. “By using the cobalt-based catalyst prepared by our method, one could remove the main bottleneck of cost to producing clean hydrogen in an electrolyzer.”
Giner Inc., a leading research and development company working toward the commercialization of electrolyzers and fuel cells, evaluated the new catalyst using its PEM electrolyzer test stations under industrial operating conditions. The performance and durability far exceeded that of competitors’ catalysts.
Important to further advancing the catalyst performance is understanding the reaction mechanism at the atomic scale under electrolyzer operating conditions. The team deciphered critical structural changes that occur in the catalyst under operating conditions by using X-ray analyses at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne. They also identified key catalyst features using electron microscopy at Sandia Labs and at Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM). The APS and CNM are both DOE Office of Science user facilities.
“We imaged the atomic structure on the surface of the new catalyst at various stages of preparation,” said Jianguo Wen, an Argonne materials scientist.
In addition, computational modeling at Berkeley Lab revealed important insights into the catalyst’s durability under reaction conditions.
The team’s achievement is a step forward in DOE’s Hydrogen Energy Earthshot initiative, which mimics the U.S. space program’s “Moon Shot” of the 1960s. Its ambitious goal is to lower the cost of green hydrogen production to one dollar per kilogram in a decade. Production of green hydrogen at that cost could reshape the nation’s economy. Applications include the electric grid, manufacturing, transportation, and residential and commercial heating.
“More generally, our results establish a promising path forward in replacing catalysts made from expensive precious metals with elements that are much less expensive and more abundant,” Liu noted.
Reference: “La- and Mn-doped cobalt spinel oxygen evolution catalyst for proton exchange membrane electrolysis”
by Lina Chong, Guoping Gao, Jianguo Wen, Haixia Li, Haiping Xu, Zach Green, Joshua D. Sugar, A. Jeremy Kropf, Wenqian Xu, Xiao-Min Lin, Hui Xu, Lin-Wang Wang and Di-Jia Liu, 11 May 2023, Science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.ade1499
The research was supported by the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office, as well as by Argonne Laboratory Directed Research and Development funding.
Process requires Cobalt.
here’s the world’s top sources of Cobalt:
Democratic Republic of Congo. Mine production: 130,000 MT. ...
Russia. Mine production: 8,900 MT. ...
Australia. Mine production: 5,900 MT. ...
Canada. Mine production: 3,900 MT. ...
Philippines. Mine production: 3,800 MT. ...
Cuba. Mine production: 3,800 MT. ...
Papua New Guinea. ...
Madagascar.
And China either owns outright or controls most of the Cobalt mines in the Congo.
Cannot be repealed.
thats what the junk science greenie idiots push, a large amount returns to water but there is massive loss in the total process, that water is never coming back to earth
..... and tell you "well it turns back to water" and "there's a pandemic, wear a dust mask", and "Feed Brawndo to your crops, it has electrolytes" and people will believe it !
, in fact they will gobble up that crap like candy
Do you realize that plants and many bacteria break down water every day?
“photosynthesis, the process by which green plants and certain other organisms transform light energy into chemical energy. During photosynthesis in green plants, light energy is captured and used to convert water, carbon dioxide, and minerals into oxygen and energy-rich organic compounds.”
People who are ignorant should at least try not to expose themselves by commenting in public. Nitwits are not worth my time. Begone.
and when this hydrogen escapes into the atmosphere, who is going to go collect it and turn it back into water ?
Al Gore ?
Santa Clause ?
you are being what you are accusing me of , maybe you should get a job with government
Clean?
Ecologically sustainable?
Low cost?
Using cobalt?
How stupid do they think I am?
%/
Insulting , isn’t it !?
The biggest fly in the green hydrogen fuel scam is
The energy used to keep it liquid
To keep it contained and not leaking out through even metal.
Isn’t cobalt mined by mostly child SLAVE labor ?
There is more free H2 in the atmosphere than CO2 and it is constantly being taken up by soil bacteria and it is reactive enough that it combines with oxygen and other elements in the atmosphere and very rarely reaches escape velocity from the Earth's atmosphere.
Do you know what books and internet search tools are and how to perform basic research for yourself? If you do then it appears that you are just committed to bray like an ignorant jackass and embarrass everyone.
🤔
There you go again flying your moron flag. I am not making the claim that this technology will be efficient enough to enable a hydrogen based economy. What I am saying is that it won’t cause hydrogen being lost from the Earth.
It’s like talking to a wall, a very, very stupid wall.
Interesting, but this will not overcome the laws of thermal dynamics.
The hydrogen fuel cycle is less than 50% efficient, meaning that given 1 unit of electrical power used to create hydrogen, you get less than 50% of the work done with even the most efficient hydrogen fuel technologies. Stated another way, you get less than half the work done as you would have gotten if just using the electricity to run an electric motor directly.
Most all hydrogen generated today is a bi-product of petroleum refining, FYI.
Hydrogen has other big problems, too. It goes boom, boom. Remember the Hindenburg? Hydrogen atoms are so tiny it leaks out of containment vessels very easily. When it mixes with other gasses it becomes highly corrosive, as well.
yes, total earth water is being depleted constantly, the Earth will get old and die.
using Hydrogen for fuel will exponentially speed up the dying process by depleting the earths precious water resource, and producing hydrogen for fuel has no environmental or logical advantage, unlike using oil for fuel.
but you are the smartest wall in the garden and have the Google search bias consensus to back you up ! I am sure Google will confirm that you need a COVID booster shot also
Look at the names of the researchers...
“by Lina Chong, Guoping Gao, Jianguo Wen, Haixia Li, Haiping Xu, Zach Green, Joshua D. Sugar, A. Jeremy Kropf, Wenqian Xu, Xiao-Min Lin, Hui Xu, Lin-Wang Wang and Di-Jia Liu,”
“THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS WILL NOT BE REPEALED......”
On the general subject of emissions by our transportation vehicles, why hasn’t electrifying our railroads by overhead wires been seriously considered? They do it a lot in Europe.
We’d get a lot more bang for our buck doing this rather than deploying batteries all over the place.
But I think the idea of replacing fossil fuels is ridiculous.
Water converting into H2 and oxygen and burning back into water again does not deplete the water supply.
The problem is net drain in energy to do either conversion.
Sorry, fraidy-cat, compared to the natural and biology processes that produce and consume hydrogen humans splitting water into hydrogen fuel is extremely minuscule and will have zero impact on the amount of hydrogen or water on this planet.
Nuclear fusion however, if we ever mastered, will reduce the amount of heavy hydrogen (deuterium) and thus the amount of heavy water on this planet as it consumes deuterium to form helium.
A small amount gets burned in the motor and returns to water , but most of the hydrogen escapes and will never get bonded with oxygen, the water is lost forever
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